Lately, all eyes have been on Bitcoin(BTC), Ethereum(ETH) and Ripple(XRP) – and who can blame them? While Bitcoin broke another record for all time high (of $2200 USD), Ethereum continues to power through the $180 mark. But where should we be looking if we are looking if we want to continue to exchange USD into cryptos? Are there other currencies which have historically been connected (more or less) to the performance of the crypto-worlds gold standard – and what has been going on with them?
If you guys haven’t guessed by now, we’re talking about Litecoin(LTC) here. I’m not going to bore you guys with the in-depth analysis as I did with Ripple(XRP), but I think that this is worth checking out.
Brief History
Designed by former Google software engineer Charles Lee, Litecoin was designed “to be the silver to bitcoins gold” by pumping out four times as many coin volume as bitcoin. As my fellow crypto-investors know, it worked, and Litecoin saw a near immediate mass market acceptance and thus, it’s performance historically closely tied to that of bitcoin.
01APR17 – 03MAY17
Regardless of the controversy caused by the announcement of SegWit, Litecoin prices soared from 0.006 (BTC) on 01APR17 to 0.014~ (BTC) on 03MAY17, it’s average at about 0.0112 (BTC) during this time.
07MAY17 – 14MAY17
This was an exciting 10 days for Litecoin. Coinbase began selling Litecoin and SegWit was successfully activated, pushing LTC’s average to roughly 0.0175~ (BTC). On 12MAY17 however, those numbers begin to drop to 0.0161 (BTC) average over the next two days.
14MAY17 – Present
LTC drops to a low on the 17th of 0.012 (BTC), has a brief 5 day bump back into the 0.013 range, then back down to it’s present at 0.010~ - making it the lowest it’s been since 03MAY17.
Under-evaluated or Under-performing?
Personally, I don’t see LTC going away because of SegWit. In fact, I believe that its value as a Usage coin will forever be tied to Bitcoin’s, especially if Bitcoin decides to integrate SegWit, that would likely send the LTC value to over $50, very quickly. As bitcoin inches closer to it's coin cap limits and Litecoin becomes more available for user in exchange for fiat, I think that we will see a 0.25 (BTC) evaluation.
Readers should do their own analysis, but I found this to be an interesting anomaly, and wanted to share. Let me know what you think is happening in the comments below, and what you're planning to do about it.
Update 23MAY17
Hello Everyone, I hope that you found this post interesting and that everyone was able to invest, as it looks like Litecoin(LTC) has jumped 28% since posting this article, back to .0137 (BTC) Thank you for you support and new followers - I will be sure to post more opportunities in the future. I apologize for not giving you guys a bigger heads up, as I started to suspect that there was a play on Friday, but didn't have time to throw together a post.